For Storing Electricity, Utilities Push New Technologies

The Wall Street JournalFebruary 27, 2014

By Cas­san­dra Sweet and Rebecca Smith

From back­yard tin­ker­ers to big cor­po­ra­tions, inven­tors have been strug­gling to find a way to store solar, wind and other renew­able energy so it can fur­nish elec­tric­ity when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.

Now Cal­i­for­nia is offer­ing busi­nesses a big incen­tive for success—contracts that the util­ity indus­try esti­mates could total as much as $3 bil­lion for suc­cess­ful, large-​​scale electricity-​​storage systems.